Last month, Sony Pictures invited Rotten Tomatoes down to Los Angeles for a little taste of Cox. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, starring John C. Reilly as a musician that goes through every affliction known to threaten artists, looks to complete a 2007 triple-hitter (along with Knocked Up and Superbad) for producer Judd Apatow. Read on for our press conference recap and impressions of the December comedy.

We arrived at the Walk Hard event to find a reception room filled with the props that populated Walk Hard: guitars, teen magazines, and some the albums that spanned the career of the great Dewey Cox: It's A Dewey Cox Teenager Party, Hey Neat!, Sir Ringe the Marshmallow Elephant, Strawberry Foxglove!, These Are My Issues, and Rox Out Cox Out. It's a miniature sample from a movie whose only goal is to be as comprehensively irreverent as possible.

First to be introduced was co-writer/director Jake Kasdan and co-writer/producer Apatow, with Reilly joining later. The two showed four clips from the film. The first clip was the opening sequence: Dewey as a child playing with his younger bother in the countryside. The absurdly idyllic playtime is broken when his brother meets his untimely demise during an ill-advised machete fight. Dewey takes the devastation of this tragedy and hones it into a musical talent. Sound familiar?

Fast forward several years for the next clip. After a performance opening for Elvis (Jack White), Dewey finds his way backstage where there a crowd encourages him to partake in smoking marijuana. After Dewey's drummer (Tim Meadows) character goes into a lengthy spiel artfully naming all of the reasons why one shouldn't smoke marijuana, Dewey is convinced to try it. Throughout the movie, Dewey will apparently not only do every drug known to mankind, but he will subsequently kick the habit of every drug.

Jenna Fischer was featured in the next clip as Darlene, singing onstage with Dewey. The scene's comedy derives from the sexual innuendo between the two as they sing their hit, "Let's Duet" (properly pronounced "Let's Do It"). Let your imagination run free. I guarantee what you come up with is nowhere near as funny as what they managed, and it's a perfect representation of Walk Hard's brand of comedy.

The final clip showed Dewey's exploration of Hinduism with the Beatles. The Fab Four (Jack Black, Justin Long, Paul Rudd, and Jason Schwartzman) bicker amongst themselves whilst trying to open Dewey up to acid. With a little help from his friend, he takes the drug, and goes down a wildly bad acid trip.

After the clips, the floor opened up to Kasdan, Apatow, and Reilly. The highlight: while Walk Hard's MPAA rating is still unknown, Apatow warned the crowd about something that might not past muster within PG-13 territory -- an extended scene involving a penis, which Apatow jokingly revealed was his. Kasdan and Apatow acknowledged that The Rutles and Spinal Tap were both major influences, but made it a point that the movie is less a spoof on musical artists than a satire on the biopic genre.

Throughout the conference, the trio pushed the quality of the music. Thirty-five songs (thirty of them originals) were recorded during the four months leading up to the Walk Hard shoot. Reilly noted that the style of the movie and his character was discovered during these sessions.

"[They] acted as a sort of tone-all blueprint for when we started the movie with all the music we already had," Reilly said.

 

Despite Walk Hard's farcical attitude, Kasdan and company were aware the music had to work as legitimately compelling stuff. They assembled a small collective of musical talents to pen the thirty original songs, including New Wave popster Marshall Crenshaw (who wrote the title track), Michael Andrews (he orchestrated popular "Mad World" cover for the Donnie Darko soundtrack), cult singer/songwriters Dan Bern and Charlie Wadhams, and Mike Viola (who voiced the catchy title ditty from Tom Hanks's That Thing You Do!).

After unleashing his inner musician in Chicago, Reilly jumped at the chance to get back in a recording studio. The other actors took a similarly enthusiastic approach: not only did everyone in Dewey's backup band have to learn how to play the songs, in some cases, they had to first learn their instruments. Tim Meadows, for example, didn't know how to play the drums before shooting and had to quickly pick them up.

Reilly enthuses that "[the] music alone stands as a great achievement," which will be anthologized in the cheekily-titled soundtrack, The Box of Cox. It's going to be an extended double-disc collection, and will hit stores sometime before Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story's scheduled release on December 21.